Conspiracy charges dropped in 1971 slaying of S.F. police officer

State prosecutors dropped charges Thursday against a longtime San Francisco maintenance worker who served 8 1/2 months in jail after he was accused with eight other men of conspiring to kill police officers in the early 1970s.

Prosecutors conceded that they had waited too long to file conspiracy charges against Richard O'Neal and four of his co-defendants, all of whom the government has portrayed as one-time black militants. The co-defendants still face murder charges for the 1971 slaying of a San Francisco police officer, as do four other men against whom conspiracy charges were not dropped.

O'Neal, however, was not accused of murder and walked free after Thursday's hearing in San Francisco Superior Court.

"I feel good," said O'Neal, 58. "It's been a horror. They interrupted 8 1/2 months of my life for something they strung up, something that came out of the clear blue sky. They were trying to wreck my life."

Prosecutor David Druliner said the statute of limitations in effect in the 1970s precluded the state attorney general from seeking the conspiracy charge more than three years after the date of the alleged offense.

O'Neal, who was arrested in January 2007 and released on bail in September, was the only one of nine defendants to not be charged with the case's central crime - the shotgun slaying of San Francisco police Sgt. John Young on Aug. 29, 1971, at the city's Ingleside Police Station.

On Thursday, prosecutors for the office of Attorney General Jerry Brown filed amended charges against the eight other men. About 120 people filled Judge Philip Moscone's court, some supporting the defendants and others honoring Young.

Conspiracy charges were dropped against Richard Brown of San Francisco, Ray Boudreaux and Henry Watson Jones, both of Altadena (Los Angeles County), and Harold Taylor of Panama City, Fla. Attorneys for three of the four other defendants are still seeking to have the conspiracy counts dropped.

All seven men who appeared in court Thursday pleaded not guilty. The eighth defendant remains a fugitive. Further proceedings were scheduled for Feb. 7.

After the hearing, Druliner said dropping the conspiracy charges would have little effect on the murder case.

But defense attorney Stuart Hanlon, representing Anthony Bottom, said amending the charges would preclude prosecutors from introducing some evidence to jurors and raised the possibility of multiple trials.

"If it was irrelevant," Hanlon said of the conspiracy accusation, "they wouldn't have charged it in the first place."

Druliner said prosecutors had believed until recently that the crime of conspiracy to commit murder, like the crime of murder, was exempt from any statute of limitations. Defense lawyers assumed the same thing until November, when the issue was raised by Mark Goldrosen, a defense attorney who had just been brought into the case.

"That's their job," James Bustamante, O'Neal's attorney, said of prosecutors, "to be sure they do not file a case that falls outside the statute of limitations. You would assume someone would have gone through this."

O'Neal's role in the case had already been under scrutiny because he was not charged in Young's slaying and because he served prison time for shooting and wounding a privately employed officer in 1971.

The principle of double jeopardy protected O'Neal from being tried again for assault in that case, but prosecutors said last year that the shooting was an "overt act" in a broader conspiracy to kill police. Prosecutors accused O'Neal of no other overt acts.

O'Neal, who maintains that he did not commit the 1971 assault, served four years in prison. He has been employed for more than 20 years for the city of San Francisco and now does maintenance at the Southeast Community Center in the Bayview.

O'Neal has faced other struggles. His wife was raped and murdered in 1979 by a convict with a long record. He raised his son and informally adopted a second young man whose mother had died.

"It's just another triumph in my life," O'Neal said Thursday. "It was their best shot, and it didn't work."

He is not completely finished with the case. He was served at the court hearing with a subpoena to testify as a witness in the other men's preliminary hearing in April.